An autonomous vehicle is a vehicle that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating with little to no human input. In particular, an autonomous vehicle can observe its surrounding environment using a variety of sensors and can attempt to comprehend the environment by performing various processing techniques on data collected by the sensors. Given knowledge of its surrounding environment, the autonomous vehicle can identify an appropriate motion path through such surrounding environment.
Thus, a key objective associated with an autonomous vehicle is the ability to perceive objects (e.g., vehicles, pedestrians, cyclists) that are proximate to the autonomous vehicle and, further, to determine classifications of such objects as well as their locations. The ability to accurately and precisely detect and characterize objects of interest is fundamental to enabling the autonomous vehicle to generate an appropriate motion plan through its surrounding environment.